Standalone Arduino / ATMega chip on breadboard

Step 5 Hooking up the crystal to the chip

Actually before we hook up the crystal, let's hook up those capacitors. Hook up those 2 22 pF ceramic disc capacitors to the chip as shown in the photo. They go right next to the negative/ground (black) wire. One leg (you don't need to worry about polarity) of the capacitor goes to the negative/ground rail, and the other to one of the pins on the chip. One capacitor hooks up to pin 9, and one to pin 10 on the chip.

Now for the crystal. Place one leg of the crystal at pin 9, and the other leg at pin 10...but make sure you place it between the capacitors and the chip/microcontroller. Refer to the photos.

That's it! You're actually done. The next 2 steps are optional. Now you can replicate what you had connected to your actual Arduino board to this standalone circuit. You'll want to reference the Arduino pin mapping from Step 4 to know what to hook up and where.

You can continue on to the next couple of steps for a little extra, and a test, or proof-of-concept for lack of better term.

Here's a quick video of the completed breadboard:

Comments

[cblizza1]

Could someone clarify this line:

"make sure you place it between the capacitors and the chip/microcontroller"

It was my understanding that each row of the bread board was a node in a circuit and it didn't matter what order (left to right) the leads are placed into it. Is this a correct understanding of nodes and rows on bread boards?

If so is there another reason the crystal needs to be between the capacitors and the chip?

[adam159]

I think he just means that you need to make sure that one cap is connected to each leg of the crystal rather than connecting both cpas to one leg

[adam159]

*caps

[Mahox]

Does this also work with 20pF capacitors? Can't get 22pF over here...